In Which I Kind Of Space Out, And Everything Is Closed

I'm not sure where my head was-- probably thinking about all the things I need to get done this week-- but I kept forgetting that today was a holiday for a lot of businesses, which was rather inconvenient.  I wanted to get started on Connor's learning theme for the week, which is "Farm Animals," but when I pulled into the library parking lot I discovered it was (of course) closed.  So then I decided the two of us would walk over to one of our favorite little coffee shops in the downtown area, and that was also closed.

So much for our planned morning activities.

Next on the list was a trip down to the pharmacy to pick up Connor's antibiotic prescription-- he has a dentist appointment tomorrow, and he has to take an antibiotic before having any dental work done due to his heart condition.  So I drove down to the pharmacy and discovered that the dental office hadn't called in the prescription yet.  I called the dental office to discover that they were closed.  Connor's appointment is for 7:30 tomorrow morning.  Not good.

I left a message with them, and thankfully someone was in the office even though they weren't seeing patients, because I got a call back about half an hour later from them letting me know that the prescription had now been called in and I should give the pharmacy an hour or so to fill it.  I decided to drift down to another favorite coffee shop in the area to wait, but that didn't work out so well.  Can you guess why?

So we went to a department store instead and spent an hour wandering around finding inexpensive farm-animal related items.  I bought Connor a barnyard puzzle and a book about goats.

So it was back to the pharmacy after that, and then home, where I went out to check the mail.  There wasn't any, of course. 

Seriously, I have no idea what planet I was living on today.

~Jess

In Which We Have A Happy Fourth Of July

Happy Fourth of July, everyone!

There were so many fireworks going off around us tonight that it sounded like artillary fire.  It was too late for Connor to stay up and watch them as it gets dark so late here in the summer-- maybe next year.  But he had a great time today anyway; we went to the Freedom Fair in Tacoma and he really enjoyed the airplane show and all of the people watching.  By far the highlight of the day for him, though, was the fact that the fair had a drum circle.  This kid is totally obsessed with percussion instruments.  There were about fifteen people sitting in a circle all drumming together, and I swear he would have watched them all day. 

So we all had a great time!  I'll write a longer blog tomorrow, it being a holiday and all.  Hope everyone had a great one!

~Jess

In Which Connor Has An Attack Of The Killer Pouties

Connor was in an ornery mood today.  This morning I informed him that we were going to the farmer's market to pick up breakfast and some supplies for the dish I wanted to bring to a barbecue we were attending later in the day.  "No!  Don't Like!" he announced.  I told him that I was sorry he felt that way, but we were still going.  He pouted all the way there in the car.

Then I decided on the spur of the moment to have a henna tattoo done at the market, and I told Connor about it.  "No!  Don't Like!" he announced.  After that didn't work, he began chanting-- or at least as close to chanting as you can get when everything is in sign language-- "All done!  All done!  All done!" over and over and over again.  After about fifteen minutes of this, he decided that I really wasn't getting the hint, and threw in some ear-piercing shrieking.  It was great.  The extremely patient and long-suffering Gary finished my henna anyway (and did an awesome job, I might add)  but we probably didn't exactly make ourselves desired repeat customers.

So after that we went home, where Connor rejected all of his toys and just wanted to sit on my lap-- not an option, since I needed to cook shortbread for the barbecue.  So he got to sit on his daddy's lap instead,which was probably about the only part of the entire day he thoroughly enjoyed.  Jeremy put him down for a very brief nap, and he of course refused to cooperate by going to sleep.  Then I went in and told him it was time to go to the barbecue.  "No!  Don't Like!"  he announced.

Are you sensing a pattern here?

When we got to the barbecue he was doing okay until he saw that they had a ceiling fan.  In Connor's mind there is only one setting ceiling fans should be in, and that is on.  He calls them all "light," but it's obvious what he means because he always stares extremely intensely at the fan while he says it and gets really excited when someone turns it on for him.  But this wasn't our house (which is not equipped with ceiling fans) and it was kind of chilly, so I told him that he couldn't have it on.  In an attempt to stave off an attack of the pouties, Jeremy told him it was because the fan was broken, which was totally untrue.  Connor just kept looking up at the fan and signing "want light, want light!" over and over-- I don't really think he has the concept of "broken" down yet.  So I just told him that no, he couldn't have the fan on.  That went over really well.

That kid didn't want to have anything to do with me for the rest of the afternoon.  Any time I was holding him his face was screwed up into an extremely angry expression, and he was so mad at me he was actually using the third person to tell me (as in "Connor don't like!  No Mommy!") which is extremely unusual for him.  Normally he just skips proper nouns entirely.  He wasn't mad at Daddy, of course, because Daddy hadn't told him no.  That's my role around here-- I am the evil parent.  I'm also there for all the nasty medical procedures and shots and brushing his hair and all the other horrible things that happen to him.  Daddy is the fun guy.  Which gets kind of annoying every once in a while after about the eighteenth time Connor has informed me that he'd rather be with Daddy, but oh well.

We had a great time at the barbecue, but it was obvious that Connor was pretty tired so we left a little early and headed back home.  The little guy was fading; he was having a hard time keeping his eyes open, but he was still pretty ticked at me so he wasn't going to go down easy.  He refused to sit up to read a bedtime story, and when I told him it was time to go to bed you can guess what his answer was. 

But I suppose we all have days like that sometimes.

~Jess

In Which We Do Not Make Fish Prints

Today we were going to do fish prints, partially because they would be in keeping with our ocean theme for the week and also partially because I have no doubt much hilarity would occur doing fish prints, and it would give me an easy topic to blog about.  I mean, even saying the phrase "fish prints" is funny.  Try it.  Fishprintsfishprintsfishprints.

Um, yeah.

Anyway, we didn't do fish prints because I woke up this morning feeling relatively lousy, and I didn't feel like going to the grocery store.  Actually, what I did was I dragged myself out of bed when it was obvious that Connor wasn't going to sleep any longer, got him up, dragged us both into the living room where I fed him breakfast, and then plopped him down on the bed next to Jeremy, who had the day off from work due to the holiday and was trying to sleep in, and announced that I was not feeling good and needed to go back to sleep now.  And Jeremy, who has the patience of a saint or there's no way he would still be married to me, got up, let me crawl back into bed, and took Connor into the other room without a single complaint.  And then he let me sleep until 12:30 in the afternoon. 

Did I mention how completely awesome my husband is?

So after I got up for the second time I was feeling much better, but I still didn't want to go to the grocery store.  Instead I just set Connor up with the finger paints (yes, that is saran wrap around his g-tube) and let him go to town, by which I mean that I mashed his fingers in the paint and he then reacted like I was trying to kill him and wiped all the paint off on my shirt, or if that wasn't available, his chest or hair.  He didn't really have a good time, but he probably had a better time than if I'd been making him touch a fish instead, so that was okay.

There's always tomorrow.

~Jess

In Which Jeremy Brews Up Trouble, Or Coffee Or Something, And Also I Want A Trained Squirrel

Remember that post I did about Jeremy needing a new coffee machine because his old one broke due to being shipped back from Afghanistan in a cardboard box with no padding?  Me neither.  This is because I blogged about it way, waaaaaaay back in April, and I neglected to research the company I ordered it from.  Turns out this was a bad idea, because they kept claiming it was back ordered and then extending the date it was back ordered to until finally a couple of weeks ago I just canceled our order and got it from someone else.  Anyway, it finally came! 

It's the Rancilo Silvia**, which is apparently some sort of awesome machine but I can't tell you why because I don't know anything about coffee, and when I ask Jer to explain it he always pulls out all of these fancy words, like "first crack" and "pyrolysis" and "chaff," and so I don't know what he's talking about.  Except maybe for that last one, which is what I think happens when your underwear gets pulled all out of whack.  Oh, wait-- that's "chafe." 

Um, anyway I just kind of start tuning him out after a little while and so I haven't actually learned anything about making good coffee, other than the fact that if you roast coffee beans in the house you set off the fire alarm and have to stand up on a chair to take out the batteries before it gives you permanent hearing loss.  I relearn that one about once a week.  Fun times.

So while I've learned all about the inner mechanism of our fire alarms, I haven't learned anything at all about operating the coffee pot, and believe me-- this thing looks like it would involve some sort of advanced degree to operate.  It's got a ton of buttons on the front, with mysterious pictographs that I have yet to decipher.  I'd read the directions, but they're probably in Italian.  Or French.  Or Frenalian or something.  Also I don't care enough about coffee to actually want to learn how to operate this machine, which is why we'll still holding on to the French press. 

We're keeping it because that way when we have guests who drink coffee and Jeremy is gone, I don't have to try and figure out what all the pictographs on the new machine mean.  After having spent four months making Jeremy coffee on the French press when he couldn't get into the kitchen to do it himself, I have totally got pushing that little plunger thing on the top of it down to an art form.  Except when I forget to set a timer and have to sort of guesstimate when the coffee is ready based on color, since I'm not going to taste it.  Also when I forget to heat the water.  It's not really my fault that my French press skills actually suck, though-- Jeremy gave me directions on how to work the press while on extremely large quantities of morphine.  But that's okay, because it gives me the chance to demonstrate my amazing drive-through coffee ordering skills.  I am awesome.

Anyway, Jeremy got this thing set up on the counter in the place of honor, and apparently it makes coffee that is greatly superior to the French press variety, or at least makes it with a lot more noise and button-pushing.  I'm glad that it's finally here, because it means that we can put our enormous drive-through coffee budget into something more productive.  I'm thinking we could use it buy a trained squirrel that could take the batteries out of fire alarms as needed.  Or maybe we could just keep the money and train the squirrel ourselves.  I wouldn't think it would be too hard-- all we'd have to do is fill the fire alarm batteries with birdseed. 

It would totally work.

~Jess


**Yes, we're choosing the American name for our future daughter partially based on the name of a coffee machine.  That was Jeremy's idea.  But I'm sure there are worse ways of picking a name.  Plus we spelled it differently.  We spelled it like the name of the poet who committed suicide by sticking her head in the oven.  That was my idea.

See?  Much better.

In Which We Go To The Beach, And Connor Teaches Me A Lesson

So in all the excitement about Gas Station Jesus yesterday, I forgot to tell you that Connor had a seizure that morning.  Only a thirty-second one and I didn't have to do mouth-to-mouth this time or anything, but still this is probably evidence that I have become way, waaaaay too jaded to this sort of thing, because telling you about cheap religious statuary took higher priority than telling you about my kid turning blue and not breathing.  This possibly makes me the worst mom ever.  Oh well.

So yeah, Connor had another seizure.  Lovely.  And we're waiting, once again, to hear back from the neurologist, though my guess is we probably won't change anything since we just upped his medication last week, and blah blah blah.  I don't have to tell any of you this, because you all know the drill by now as that was seizure number thirty-nine.  Connor needs to quit having these things, because I'm seriously tired of blogging about them.  Also I'm relatively sure stopping breathing thirty-nine times isn't very good for your health, though doing it in public is a great way to meet random people and see whether or not you want to be friends with them.  (Hint: the ones screaming "OH MY GOD A DEAD BABY!!!"  and shouldering others out of the way to get a better angle while taking pictures with their cellphones are probably the people you want to avoid inviting out to lunch, unless you happen to carry arsenic in your purse and want to try it out on somebody.  Believe me; I've been tempted.)

Um, anyway, so today we didn't have any seizures, though we did get some interesting looks from various bystanders.  But I'm getting ahead of myself. 

In keeping with the spirit of our ocean theme this week in my ongoing plan to force Connor to touch as many horrible things as possible, we went to the beach.  Specifically, we went to Alki beach, which is one of the few beaches in the area that has a wheelchair accessible walkway bordering it.  Unfortunately, said walkway is up about thirty feet from the shore-- at least at low tide, anyway-- and there's no paved sidewalk to get down to the beach, which was where all the horrible things I wanted to torture Connor with were.  I can't just pick the kid up and haul him down there, because he's got so much medical equipment at this point that there's no way I can slog through a bunch of sand dunes with all of that stuff loaded on my back and a thirty-something pound kid who won't hold on to me leaning all his weight backwards off my hip. 

But we had to press on, in the name of Science!  Or something.  So what did we do?

Connor's wheelchair looks a heck of a lot like a high-end stroller-- enough like one that whenever we go to the airport they try to make me put it up on the conveyor belt and I have to argue with them for a few minutes before they'll believe that it doesn't come apart in enough pieces to fit up there.  The wheels on this thing are not exactly built for sand dunes.  Imagine the scene, if you can.  You're a sunbather on the beach, lying out on your towel and soaking up some rays.  All of the sudden, into your view comes this woman, her shoes in one hand, grunting and digging in her heels and muttering words probably not appropriate for public use.  She's straining to pull an expensive-looking stroller backwards across the sand dunes while a kid who's obviously more than big enough to walk is happily bouncing along in the seat.  What do you think?

Judging from the looks I was getting from the sunbathers, you think I'm totally insane.  And you'd probably be right, but that's beside the point.  Anyway, I hauled that wheelchair all the way down to the first set of driftwood logs, took off Connor's shoes, and plunked him down in the sand.  Rather predictably, he spent the first few seconds acting like I'd just immersed him in a tank full of piranhas, but after a minute or so I buried his feet, which actually calmed him down-- probably because the weight of the sand offered some deep pressure.  I sat there with him and took the opportunity to pull out the camera while I caught my breath and did my best not to steam about all the looks I was getting from the people around me, none of whom made the slightest attempt to help me get Connor down there despite the obvious trouble I was having and several of whom (mostly teenagers) were audibly laughing. 

And then the magic happened. 

Connor reached down without prompting, and began stroking the sand.  This is the child who reacts to anything touching his palms like it burns him.  I couldn't believe what I was seeing.  Then, wonder upon wonders, he actually dug his hand down, grabbed a fistful of sand, brought it up to his face and looked at it carefully for a minute before opening his palm and dumping it out.  That was the first time he had voluntarily reached down and picked up a fistful of anything other than the cloths we use to wipe his face.  Ever.

So you're this sunbather, and you roll over to your side again, and lo and behold that woman is still there and is now kneeling down in the sand clutching her son to her chest, laughing uncontrollably.  Also, for some reason, she's crying.  And you stare, and smirk, and still think she's crazy.

But she doesn't care anymore.

~Jess

In Which I Have An Interesting Roadside Encounter

So today I was driving around aimlessly in Renton looking for a notary so that I could get one of our eight bazillion (I got my degree in English, so I'm allowed to use imaginary words) pieces of paperwork for the adoption stamped, and of course I'd set out with this idea that since Renton wasn't that big a town, surely I could find one by wandering around until I stumbled upon a Kinko's or UPS or something.  Not surprisingly, this wasn't working out so well. 

Since it was a relatively nice day, all of the gas stations in the area had stands set up in the parking lots selling various things-- mostly seasonal fruit and rugs of dubious quality.  I kept passing these things every other block or so, and I wasn't paying too much attention to them since none of the stands seemed to be equipped with handy notaries.  At any rate I was well past the downtown and on my way to Seattle when I saw it-- a nondescript gas station with a red roof and a stand outside.  I must have slowed down to half the speed limit just to savor the feeling of incredulous disbelief.

They were selling Jesus.

Really-- instead of cherries or rugs or shoddy knock-off purses, they were selling three foot high resin statues of Our Lord and Savior decked out in various improbable, though festive (did they make fluorescent lime-green dye back then?) colors of robes.  The occasional Mary or St. Francis was thrown in for variety, but mostly it was All Jesus, All the Time.  Whoever cast the original mold had obviously been going for the traditional "Jesus Teaching" pose but had ended up instead with the rather offbeat Maneki Neko pose.  Also Jesus' nose appeared to have gone on a pilgrimage and was currently hanging out under His left eye, giving Him a sort of Picasso-like feel.

I swear I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.

So the question I have is, who the heck buys Gas Station Jesus?  And if you did decide to buy said extremely inexpensive knockoff statue of the Son of God, where would He then ride in your car if all of the seats were full?  I mean, you couldn't exactly throw Him in the trunk-- it would seem rather irreverent.  The same goes for riding on the floorboards.  Perhaps you could strap him to the roof and he could bestow his benevolence on your fellow commuters, or at least prevent them from tailgating.  I would imagine the possibility of having a three-foot high resin statue of the Son of God hurtling through your windshield at 60 miles an hour would probably have that effect.

At any rate, I finally found a notary after a very patient friend painstakingly walked me through some extremely convoluted directions that involved a street which changed its name four times and other such shenanigans, and we headed back home.  Though it was hard, I managed to restrain myself from driving back by that station and picking up a Gas Station Jesus of my very own.  Not only did I not have any place to put Him, but my cat Loki already attempts to eat our much smaller baby Jesus every year when we get out the nativity set, and I just know that bringing home one that size would trigger a horrific and messy tragedy that would not only be borderline sacrilegious given my prior knowledge of the likely results, but would also end in me cleaning out fluorescent lime-green cat poop for two weeks. 

And who wants to do that?

~Jess